


The Favor

by Elske



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-07
Updated: 2017-11-06
Packaged: 2019-01-30 12:29:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12653553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elske/pseuds/Elske
Summary: Olivia needs a favor. Oh, okay, technically Sonny needs the favor. Or is it Rafael's favor?...in which Rafael Barba finds himself agreeing to care for an injured Sonny Carisi. Because someone has to do it. Because he's always had a soft spot for the detective. Really, just a tiny little soft spot. Clearly nothing more than the tiniest of soft spots, honest, he promises. (Are you convinced yet?)





	The Favor

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lawyerboyfriends](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lawyerboyfriends/gifts).



Four little seemingly innocuous words that have amazing power when put together: “I need a favor.”

Rafael fights the urge to sigh and tries to stifle the wish that he’d let the phone call ring through to his voicemail. “What is it, Olivia?”

“It’s Carisi.” She sounds worried. “He’s going to be fine. I’m at the hospital with him right now. He looks pretty bad, but it’s going to be fine.” It almost sounds, Rafael thinks, like she’s trying to reassure herself as much as she is him. “He’s got some sprained ribs, some bruises, a concussion. They’re about to discharge him, and send him home, but he needs someone to keep an eye on him. I was about to take him home, and I just got called in on a case. I need Fin and Rollins there. I need someone to watch Carisi. Can you do it?”

Rafael’s heart lurches, just a little bit. Carisi, of all people. He wonders, and not for the first time, if Olivia has noticed the soft spot he has for the detective: and he hopes she hasn’t, he’s having a hard enough time dealing with it himself. “You’ll owe me a favor,” he replies, “but of course I’ll do it.” Olivia thanks him, gives him directions to the hospital where they are, thanks him again.

Olivia and Carisi are sitting close together in the hospital lobby, and Rafael’s heart lurches again: it was one thing hearing the list of the other man’s injuries, and it was another thing entirely to see them. Carisi, frankly, looks horrible: the beginnings of a bruise are starting to darken on his face, his eyes are wide and glazed and his gaze is uneven. Somehow, still, he smiles when he sees Rafael.

“Don’t tell me,” Rafael says, his voice pitched low as so not to carry in the echoing lobby. “Just wait until I see the other guy?”

Carisi flinches. “Yeah no,” he admits. “There were three of them. I don’t think I got in a single punch.”

“Dare I ask why?”

He shrugs. “Sometimes you arrest someone, he’s got friends and family, they don’t like that you arrested them. I’ll be fine, you both should just go home.”

Olivia gives him a withering look. “What did the doctor say?”

“That I could go home.”

“That you could go home with someone observing you for at least twenty-four hours to make sure your symptoms aren’t worsening.” She rolls her eyes, hands Rafael a packet of papers and a small plastic bag. “Here, his after-care information and two prescriptions. One is for pain, the other is for vertigo. Thank you again for taking him home with you and watching him, I really appreciate it.”

“I can go to my own house!”

Olivia looks from Carisi to Rafael and back to Carisi. “Do you still live in a fourth floor walk-up apartment?” Carisi nods, and she actually rolls her eyes. “And it’s that same apartment where those guys found you, right? And you really want to go back there?”

“Rollins arrested them, and I’m not scared,” Carisi protests.

“You shouldn’t exert yourself that much,” Rafael chimes in. “There’s an elevator where I live,” and God help him from ever having to have this argument about walk-up apartments ever again. “I’ve got it, thanks, Olivia.”

“I owe you one.” She smiles at him, smiles at Carisi, and then takes her phone out of her pocket to catch up with the rest of the squad.

“I’ll pull the car around for you, wait here,” Rafael says, looking down at Carisi, who immediately looks offended. 

“My legs are fine, I can walk, I don’t need you do do that!” He stands up, and then his eyes flutter and he sits down with a whimper.

Rafael shakes his head. “Do you want a wheelchair, or will you hold on to my arm?”

“No.”

He glares at the other man, and watches Carisi’s bravado melt away. 

“Okay, fine,” he says, “Your arm, please.”

Rafael holds his arm out, feels Carisi’s strong grip as he pulls himself up out of his chair. He’s suddenly very close, and Rafael curses, once again, that soft spot he has for the detective. The one that makes him flush a little, the one that speeds up his heartbeat a little, the one that is certainly not a crush because he’s a grown man and crushes are for teenage girls. Right. “Right,” he says, aloud, and the two of them make their way out of the hospital, safely into Rafael’s car, across town to his apartment. 

Carisi weaves on his feet a bit on the elevator; Rafael reaches for the other man’s hand to steady him. He was expecting an annoyed look, but the one that he gets is something more flustered. Flustered? No, embarrassed, he decides. Who wouldn’t be embarrassed to have first been beaten up and then have to have someone like Rafael Barba as a babysitter?


End file.
